Old 02-25-2018, 09:46 PM   #1
GaryJ73167
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Default Piano Chord Generator

Hi All,

Quick question that maybe isn't dierctly related to Reaper, but, maybe it is. All depends on how you look at it.

I am guitarrist that can (depending on the song) sometimes fake my way through a bass line when doing recordings.

What I want to do is add some piano (keyboards) on top of some of my recordings. However, I really dont want to take the time to buy a keyboard, try to learn the chords i want to play,..etc...etc.. (yeah, yeah, I know. I am being lazy).

But, I want a quick way to get my chords in my recordings without having to do the aboev mentioned.

So, esssentialy, what I am looking for is a way to just tell my DAW (or some other software) that i want a Cm , or a G, or an F,..etx....etc....general piano chord at a particular point of my track (maybe a solid piano chord or a few notes of the chord to fill it in....strumming?)

What I found was a software called "Harmony Navigator"

http://www.cognitone.com/downloads/index.stml?p=1

You can basically tell the software what chord progression you want to build, and it comes with a few different playing stlyes and sure enough, it makes your song for you. You export the song as a MIDI track and I am assuming you can just import it right into REAPER as a midi file and put your own effects to it

I was just wondering if anyone out there knows anything about this software or has any experience with it? Or, if someone knows if there is an alternative to this software that may work better for what I'm trying to accomplish

Any bit of assistance anyone can give me would be greatly appreciated
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Old 02-26-2018, 12:59 AM   #2
RCJacH
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I barely play any piano at all, but had to arrange quite sophisticated piano parts for work, mostly in ballad style.

I do not trust the current generations of MIDI generating softwares, be it band-in-a-box or Ezkeys, especially for harmonic instruments, since they have a lot of problem with authentic voicing and voice leading. Thus I do everything by drawing on the piano roll, and I get quite skilled at doing that, including drawing quasi-authentic velocity and timing variations manually.

My approach to piano arrangement is not to use it as a pad instrument, but to use it as a percussive instrument with adjustable sustains. In fact just like a finger picking guitar with different voice in fact. The reason is that since piano have natural note decays, to make it a sustainable instrument like bowed strings, you need to use a lot of advanced techniques such as rolled arpeggios found in classical piano repertoires with fine-tuned voicing so it won't muddy up the piece, to make it sound more musical and interesting. It's a lot harder than playing chords and melodies.

Therefore, to think of it as a percussive instrument, you only need to consider 3 things. 1, Where to land accents; 2, How and where to fill the frequency spectrum; 3, how thick the texture is.

1 is very simple: Chords are your accents, like a crush cymbal or a snare hit. Aligning your chords with other instrument for gigantic power hit, or syncopating them and weaving listeners attention back and forth between various instruments.

2 voicing and velocity defines the spectrum, do you want a fat chord that fills up the whole spectrum with left hand playing octave and right hand playing 4 or 5 note chords? Or do you want right hand filling up the upper-mids with triads and leaving the lower-mids to the guitars? Chords should be played with closed voicing for one hand, and the most musical voicing is cohesive with the harmonic series (with opened voicing in the lower octave and closed ones up top). The top note is important, as it will form some sort of a melody. You can move the top note around melodically, even within a chord, and fill the ones below that with chordal tones. How you do that depends on your theory knowledge, add extensions and suspensions for more musical tension.

How much of the spectrum do you want it to fill with overtones? Brightened with heavy velocity or softer and mushy with lower velocity? Before you reach for eqs or even volume knob, reconsider your voicing and velocity.

3. Texture. Basically what you do in between the accents. I would say this is exactly the same with guitar, just with different voicing and number of notes allowed. Play around with arpeggio or broken chords, fills, and other musical effects. Transfer what you play on guitar to piano voicing (the harmonic series).

The current generation of MIDI generating algorithms disregard voice-leading, chordal melody, and musical textures, thus I don't recommend using them.
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Old 02-26-2018, 03:01 AM   #3
dookus
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Default This is quite useful

Try the JS MIDI Chord In Key[midi/midi_chordkey]plugin.
It's a good start
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Old 02-26-2018, 09:08 AM   #4
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I can't tell if you're on Windows or Mac. If Mac...never mind.

If Windows, there's a cool, inexpensive app (US$29) called ChordPulse. Really easy to use. You compose in CP, then drag the MIDI to wherever.

http://chordpulse.com/index.html

Perfect timing. New YT video from Kevin Wayne...using ChordPulse with Reaper.

https://youtu.be/2nXmz2NmLbI

A longer (5 x 15 minutes) YT video series on a previous version (2013).

https://youtu.be/CHC_KLsHBDo
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Old 02-27-2018, 10:34 AM   #5
toddhisattva
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dookus View Post
Try the JS MIDI Chord In Key[midi/midi_chordkey]plugin.
It's a good start
There's also PizMidi midiChords https://www.thepiz.org/plugins/?p=pizmidi

I use ReaPack and am an avid collector of JS scripts so I can't tell exactly where these came from:

JS: Assign chords to single keys on your midi controller
(it works on MIDI you don't really need a controller it works fine from the Virtual MIDI Keyboard. "Assign" mode you play a chord and the plugin remembers it to a given key, "play" mode hit that key and hear the chord.)

JS: Chord Generator
JS: MIDI Chorderizer

I've been having unreasonably good luck letting "MMA- Musical MIDI Accompaniment" generate most of the tracks I need. If you're able to run Python programs (not necessarily ReaScript/Python, just a Python interpreter) it might save you *lots* of time. Like Harmony Navigator it creates a MIDI file, a General MIDI file in this case, so you can quickly preview it with any General MIDI player.
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Old 12-11-2018, 11:42 AM   #6
jfog
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Default pizmidi "Account Suspended"

"There's also PizMidi midiChords https://www.thepiz.org/plugins/?p=pizmidi"
Went there today...

"ACCOUNT SUSPENDED"
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Old 12-12-2018, 12:06 PM   #7
Jason Lyon
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Have to disagree with RCJacH.

Band in a Box is actually very good for auto accompaniment, although sometimes a little janky when it comes to voice leading and inversions. Mind you, some pianists are just as janky...

As a pianist (a mostly unjanky one) and only a hack guitarist, I tend to use it to generate the latter (it does a respectable job there too - it's fooled a lot of people). But I have experimented with its piano output and it really isn't at all bad straight out of the gate. Although you might want to flip some inversions in the MIDI here and there when it gets oddly "hoppy" at the points where it stitches together phrases from its internal library. The matching algorithm is a work in progress.

But that's MIDI - you can also use the sampled RealTracks (which it similarly slices and dices) for a better sounding but less flexible result.

Either way, you could get it to generate half a dozen accompaniment takes and comp together something more natural or preferable, phrase by phrase or section by section.

And no - I don't work for them. I use BIAB and respect it, but I don't look forward to the day when software like this puts us all out of work...
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Old 12-13-2018, 01:11 PM   #8
Spirit
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OP is likely long gone but for future enquiries, I think Scaler is exactly what he's looking for. You can even display as a guitar fretboard instead of keys. Great functionality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGuY3K24ZDs
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Old 12-13-2018, 05:40 PM   #9
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Spirit View Post
OP is likely long gone but for future enquiries, I think Scaler is exactly what he's looking for. You can even display as a guitar fretboard instead of keys. Great functionality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGuY3K24ZDs
+1

Took awhile to find Scaler with any kind of discount. It's a nice addition to InstaChord and InstaScale (from W.A. Productions).
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Old 12-14-2018, 12:09 AM   #10
Jason Lyon
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Oddly enough, I just turned 50 and am revisiting 15 because I've just got a cheapo Strat type to mess around with. Mid-life crisis possibly, but I just fancied it. And I can damn well afford a reasonable knockoff, so why not? (Incidentally for those who don't know, when you're my age you buy presents for yourself...)

Back in the day, piano was always my instrument but when I didn't have one available I'd play a guitar. I could do okay, but I was never a god at it.

Having since lived through some 30-odd years as a pianist, I find it interesting that my mental and physical approach and attitude is still so different on a guitar. I've played with and written for guitarists, but overwhelmingly just given them leadsheets and let them sort it out.

No criticism intended either way, just sayin' (as they just say).
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